Ultimate Power #9Review

Share.

The best evidence yet that the Ultimate Universe needs to end.

By Richard George

Welcome to another IGN Comics review. If you've been here before, you know the drill. If you haven't, here's how it works. We grade on a 100-point scale. Numerically this is represented as a 10 point system with 0.1 increments. These scores also translate to particular labels. To learn more about our rating system, look for the red link near our final score at the bottom. For trade, arcs and manga reviews, we'll comment on art and writing along with a final score. Weekly books get a faster treatment due to their shorter length.

One thing to keep in mind is we're providing you with multiple reviews and multiple scores. To keep things simple (for you and for us), we're limiting this to one Additional Take. The Additional Take reviewer will have his or her score listed directly after their opinion. The Final Score is not affected by this and is directly determined by the Main Reviewer (who is listed in the article's byline).

Any time you feel like commenting on our reviews, you may. Our weekly review index, which is published late Wednesday night, has a comment section. Every review we publish does as well (look below). You can also find our message boards by clicking the link on the left-hand side. Enjoy!

This series single-handedly proves there's no such thing as a slam dunk in comics. When you mix Brian Bendis, Jeph Loeb, J. Michael Straczynski and Greg Land into a project, you'd think you'd get something fairly appealing, even if it's set in the ailing Ultimate Universe. Apparently that's not correct as Supreme Power is quite possibly the most boring piece of... work I've read all year. Every issue resulted in the same sequence of events – more fighting and more of Greg Land demonstrating that he's doing some very NSFW research on his computer.

What makes this issue so dull? Try the lack of plot for one. And before the cynics run around screaming about Jeph Loeb, realize that the writer didn't have much to work with when his turn arrived. The prior six issues had mostly dealt with fighting – Loeb was the one who (naturally) had to get the characters to fight to some sort of conclusion. With the addition of the Hulk at the end of the last installment, we finally got to see a less-pretty sequel to the Millar/Hitch Ultimates arc featuring the Hulk - or a much shorter version of World War Hulk. This isn't Loeb's fault, but given that I just barely survived six months of World War, there was no way I was ready for its spiritual, Ultimate successor. Haven't we said all that we need to say about the Hulk? That's not to say this issue's quality was completely out of Loeb's hands but... this ship was on a set course for a while.

Ultimate Power was promised to be a significant milestone in the histories of the Supreme and Ultimate Universes. At least one character would switch worlds, and this was also supposed to provide a hint or two towards Ultimatum, the event that will supposedly "destroy" the Ultimate Universe. Both of said plot elements are there, but neither carries any weight and I doubt anyone is really going to care. They also both feel very awkward and forced. It's odd – Ultimate events have never delivered. I can't recall a single one that I look upon fondly. Ultimate Power, with its simplistic, dull, elementary plot and even more meaningless consequences, holds up that tradition in fine form.

Time to pull the plug on these tired concepts, Marvel. They've been run into the ground and served their purposes.